Ramsay: the Ascension

Monday, March 30, 2020
Meditation:
    After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them.
    “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
    —Acts 1:9-11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    [Continued from yesterday]
    After this conviction was produced, we come to the final stage, the apparent departure of the embodied Divine Nature, the man Jesus, from the world. The earthly period had fulfilled its purpose and reached its climax. This is the Ascension. This term, like many of the other words which must be employed by man in discussing the subject, is an attempt to express Divine truth—which as Divine is not subject to worldly conditions—in the language of human imperfection. The Divine Nature is omnipresent. It does not lie more in one direction from us than in another; it is neither above nor below: it is everywhere. To say that Jesus went up into heaven is a merely symbolic expression; it has not a local significance; it is an emblematic statement of the truth. The truth which has to be conceived in the mind is that, at the due stage and the proper moment, Jesus ceased to be apparent to human senses in the world, and is God with God.
    ... Sir William M. Ramsay (1851-1939), Pictures of the Apostolic Church, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1910, p. 2-3 (see the book)
    See also Acts 1:8-11; Luke 24:46-53; John 1:1,14; 1 Cor. 15:3-9; 1 John 4:8-10
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your authority is without limit. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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